Monthly Archives: August 2019

They’re the Ones Who Knock

breaking bad movie

(Warning: series spoilers ahead)

The last time we saw him, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) was barreling through a chain-link gate in his El Camino, half-laughing, half-crying after being sprung from his neo-Nazi captors by Walter White (Bryan Cranston) in a drug house bloodbath in the Breaking Bad finale.

But where did Jesse go? Did Walter actually die? Ever since the AMC series concluded six years ago, Internet denizens have speculated wildly — musings fueled by rumors that they were working on a new Breaking Bad project.

Wonder no more: Netflix is expected to announce that a Breaking Bad film will arrive in October. Entitled El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, the film has even seen its trailer leaked onto the Internet with a release date, Oct. 11.

The news isn’t official yet, but it was all but confirmed when CNET noticed last week that a placeholder page for the movie popped up on Netflix. The page has since been taken down, but not before exuberant fans got hold of the news. The trailer doesn’t show Pinkman or other Breaking Bad characters; instead, it features only an addict refusing to talk to cops for fear he would be similarly enslaved by drug dealers. “No way I’m helping you people put Jesse Pinkman back inside a cage,” the tweaker says over an ominous score. The synopsis on the now-deleted Netflix page reveals little of the plot: “Fugitive Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) runs from his captors, the law, and his past.”

Rumors of the film were further confirmed in an interview Paul gave to the New York Times, which ran an article Saturday about the series and the show’s legacy. “It’s a chapter of Breaking Bad that I didn’t realize that I wanted,” Paul told the Times about another chapter in the story. “And now that I have it, I’m so happy that it’s here.”

Paul also recalled early conversations with series creator Vince Gilligan, who will direct the film. “I would follow him into a fire,” he said, adding, “I was so happy that Vince wanted to take me on this journey.”

In interviews earlier this month, Bob Odenkirk, star of the Breaking Bad prequel series Better Call Saul, added to the rumor mill. He told /Film that the movie was shot secretly under the guise of an indie film called Greenbrier. In addition, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Odenkirk spoke briefly about the movie. “I’ve heard so many different things about it, but I am excited about the Breaking Bad movie. I can’t wait to see it…I don’t know what people know and don’t know. I find it hard to believe you don’t know it was shot. They did it. You know what I mean? How is that a secret? But it is. They’ve done an amazing job of keeping it a secret.”

No word on whether Cranston will be involved in the movie, though some fans have speculated that he may have survived the fusillade of bullets that ended the series — and, ostensibly, his character. And given Gilligan’s fondness for timelines that leapfrog from past to present, Walter White may again be the one who knocks.

The Netflix announcement is expected Monday.

The Absurdity of The Deal

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Suddenly, this all makes sense.

Donnie Dullard left reporters flabbergasted today when he announced that he was cancelling his trip to Denmark after that nation not take his offer to buy Greenland seriously.

“Denmark is a very special country with incredible people, but based on Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen’s comments, that she would have no interest in discussing the purchase of Greenland, I will be postponing our meeting scheduled in two weeks for another time,” Trump fat-pecked from his iPhone Tuesday night. He must have used the transcription function on the phone, or had an aide type it. No way Littlefinger could have managed to tweet that on his own, as he spelled Frederiksen’s name correctly.Image result for mette frederiksen

But he couldn’t help but play the fool in the news conference that followed. He called the PM’s rejection rude and undiplomatic. He took particular offense that she apparently remarked the offer was “absurd.” “She wasn’t calling me absurd,” the Simpleton-in-Chief bellowed. “She was calling the United States absurd.”

Come again? For one thing, we are absurd. We put you behind the nation’s steering wheel, dumbass. Secondly, in an interview with a Danish newspaper, Frederiksen explained why she turned down Mr. Blubber. “Greenland is not Danish,” she clarified. “Greenland belongs to Greenland. I strongly hope that this is not meant seriously.”

We say the same thing to ourselves every day, Mette. Sadly, it was meant seriously, as Trumptards take everything their president says (see El Paso for reference). The New York Times ran a headline today noting the “Bewilderment and Anger” among Danes and diplomats alike over Trump’s spurned advances. The anger is understandable. But the bewilderment can be settled quickly, with an Associated Press story that ran earlier this week, and a Trump maneuver run earlier this year.

This week, the AP ran a story explaining that “Greenland is where Earth’s refrigerator door is left open, where glaciers dwindle and seas begin to rise.” The story went on to explain that New York University’s air and ocean scientists have tracked Greenland as the spot to best calculate global warming and climate change. And their findings are horrifying.

“It is so warm at Helheim Glacier, just inside the Arctic Circle, that on an August day, coats are left on the ground and (scientists) work on the watery melting ice without gloves,” the article said. “In one of the closest towns, Kulusuk, the morning temperature reached a shirtsleeve 52 degrees.  The ice they are standing on is thousands of years old. It will be gone within a year or two, adding yet more water to rising seas worldwide.

“Summer this year is hitting Greenland hard with record-shattering heat and extreme melt,” it continued. “By the end of the summer, about 400 billion metric tons of ice — maybe more — will have melted or calved off Greenland’s giant ice sheet, scientists estimate. That is enough water to flood Greece a third of a meter deep.”

That’s pretty irrefutable evidence, though Donnie is doing his darnedest to refute it. Remember, in March, he appointed the twit William Happer as head of a “presidential advisory committee” on global warming. Image result for william happer's bad teeth

Trump tried to name it “The Federal Committee on Climate Security”– until he learned that, under law, federal committees must include “open meetings, chartering, public involvement, and reporting.” And that doesn’t jibe with Trump’s assertion that global warming is a Chinese hoax.

It does, however, jibe with the president’s desire to squelch scientific data. Turning Greenland into a massive real estate purchase would allow him more control over who is allowed onto the oil-rich Arctic plot. Why permit pesky scientists there when you can replace them with GOP-friendly fossil fuel interests?

Sorry, Donald. Greenland ain’t on the market. America does, however, have a bridge in Brooklyn we can sell you. Feel free to take a flying leap off it.

‘Hot Air’ Quickly Runs Out of Steam

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In 2013, Steve Coogan starred in a gem of a movie, Alan Partridge, about a self-centered disc jockey struggling with age, sagging ratings and the looming reality that a new generation had left him behind. While he played an egomaniac, the film deftly offset Partridge’s boorishness with sincere British charm — along with perhaps the best driving-and-singing scene ever captured on screen.Image result for alan partridge driving

In Hot Air, Coogan plays a similar character, just without the charm and the one-man carpool karaoke. And the loss is a crippling one.

Less a comedy than a broad swipe at America’s talk radio landscape and its right-wing followers, Air takes aim at everything from hypocritical Evangelicals to homophobic xenophobes to gun-toting proponents of a border wall. More troubling, it seems to call for the eradication of talk shows that echo those sentiments with an odd catch phrase: “Talk isn’t cheap. It’s toxic.” The result is 100  minutes of, well, hot air.

Coogan plays Lionel Macomb, a Limbaugh-esque radio personality whose world is capsized when his mixed-race niece Tess (Taylor Russell) unexpectedly enters his life. On top of his personal life’s upheaval, Lionel’s protege, Gareth Whitely (Skylar Astin),  is gaining on him in the ratings with a soft, fuzzy and bland brand of conservatism, threatening Lionel’s 20-year reign at the top of the radio heap.

Directed by Frank Coraci, who helmed Adam Sandler’s hits The Waterboy and The Wedding SingerAir seems determined to take Coogan out of his affable screen persona and turn him into a modern-day Howard Beale, the darkly funny news anchor played by Peter Finch in 1976’s Network. But instead of earning followers with his anthemic “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” Macomb comes off as simply mad as hell. Air may see itself styled after Network, but its cliched dialogue plays more like a Network trailer.Image result for network howard beale

“You’ve done well for yourself telling other people how to think,” a character tells Macomb, a thinly-veiled shot at at Limbaugh’s “ditto heads,” fans accused of having no thoughts of their own until given conservative marching orders.

It amounts to a wasted opportunity to take a darkly comic look and the incendiary, polarized landscape of American politics. And it doesn’t help that Coraci overloads the film with unnecessary plot strands, including Macomb’s strained romantic relationship with  Valerie (Neve Campbell), a publicist who is trying to save her boss’ career while opening his heart.

Campbell and Russell do a serviceable job in the limited space they’re granted in an anemic script by first-time screenwriter Will Reichel, and Astin aptly plays a double-talker who uses the Bible for ratings, not redemption. But it’s undeniably Coogan’s movie, and he gets some laughs when he gets behind the microphone. Too bad he’s undercut by an American accent that slips in and out of his natural British cadence.

Earlier this year, Coogan faced a real-life scare: The comedian, known for being a lead foot behind the wheel, faced a six-month driving suspension for speeding through a British thoroughfare in his Porsche. After Coogan explained that driving was integral to his upcoming Alan Partridge travelogue TV series, the judge lessened the suspension to two months and told the actor to lay off the gas pedal. He probably should have suggested Coogan lay off the politics, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iwuy4hHO3YQ